Living in the shadows
by Mab1
Summary: Embellishment of a scene from the extended version of FOTR. Boromir and Aragorn have an argument.


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I saw the 30 minutes extra longer version of FOTR last night, and wish I'd been sober enough to remember the exact scenes and words that weren't there before. But I wasn't. So here's an embellishment of one of them that struck me: after Lothlorien, Boromir and Aragorn have an argument about where next to proceed, and Boromir shows the first real signs of – er – disturbance. The words from the scene are not the right ones, but there you go. If anyone has the script let me know and I'll fix it. Hope you enjoy it – please let me know!

Frodo stood alone on top of Bag End, and at his feet was Gandalf's hat. The hobbit blinked away tears as he looked at it, and sighed as it started to snow. Gimli appeared to his left, with Legolas, and started building a wall around Pippin, who didn't seem to notice: Frodo watched as his young friend smiled up at him, and enquired where Sam was.

"No thank you," he found himself saying. "I'm not hungry."

"But that is your destiny," replied Elrond gravely. 

"I will give you this gift," added Galadriel, holding out a plate of cakes and offering him one. Frodo took a small wafer of lembas, and nibbled it. 

"Fool of a Took!" roared Gandalf, as he galloped by on an eagle, snatching up his hat. 

"But I'm not a Took!" Frodo tried to shout back. "I'm lost!"

"You're as good as a Took," hissed Lobelia Sackville-Baggins suddenly, popping her head up from behind an opened umbrella. "Never a true Baggins. Half Brandybuck, half watering-can."

Frodo frowned in confusion as the umbrella turned into a huge mushroom, and Merry and Bilbo started to hack at it with their swords. 

"Frodo!" shouted Boromir. "Draw your sword! Keep your feet well-hidden! Try and outstare it!"

Suddenly there was a terrific barking and growling from behind him, and he spun round to see Farmer Maggot with his hands on his hips and head thrown back, laughing hysterically, and his dogs bounding towards him. 

"Run, Frodo!" cried Aragorn, drawing his sword and moving in front of him. Sam stood at his side. 

"Run, Mr Frodo!" he echoed firmly. "Mr Strider and me will sort these out – run!"

"After my mushroom again, are you, Baggins?" shouted Farmer Maggot, suddenly grown to the size of a giant and producing a huge iron frying pan from his pocket. "Well you can't have it. No. It's mine, my precious – you can't have it – it's mine. Mine!"

"Run!" repeated Strider, urgently, fending off a dog. Frodo suddenly came to his senses and took his advice, sprinting away with a speed he never knew he possessed. There were sounds of struggle behind him, and a cry from Sam; he turned round in time to see Maggot sweep his friend away with one hand and knock Aragorn to the floor with the other that held the frying pan, and run after him. He took to his feet once again, and ran all the way to Mordor: and not once did the farmer stop running behind him. Frodo grew weary: suddenly his feet were like lead, and Maggot, who had just changed into Barliman Butterbur, was gaining on him: the sounds behind him grew closer, and Frodo looked over his shoulder in horror as his pursuer came nearer, and nearer – he turned, and tripped, and fell, and fell, and – 

It was the sound of raised voices that woke him from his sleep, and the immediate relief of not being chased through Mordor by the landlord of the Prancing Pony with a frying pan was soon overridden by the discovery that behind him Boromir and Aragorn appeared to be having some sort of argument – and from the sound of it, Frodo realised, a rather heated one. 

He strained his ears to hear the men's voices. Boromir sounded angry, frustrated; Aragorn did not appear to be saying much, but the hobbit could feel the tension thick on the air. He did not wish them to know he was awake and spying on them, but he half-opened an eye and squinted through his eyelashes at his human companions just in time to see Boromir snatch a hand out and grab hold of Aragorn's cloak, hauling him back round to face him. 

"You are afraid! All your life you have hidden in the shadow, afraid of who you are – afraid of what you are!"

"I would not lead the ring within a hundred leagues of your city," returned Aragorn, retrieving the corner of his cloak from Boromir's grasp and turning away. Boromir stared after him for a second before springing after him and laying his hand on the other's arm. 

"Why will you not heed my counsel?" he demanded, harshly. "You place your trust in the elves soon enough – why will you not take friendly advise when it is given from your own kind?"

There was silence, and Aragorn bowed his head. 

"I have long ago learnt of the pain that can come from trusting _my kind_," he said finally, and Frodo was shocked at the bitterness in his voice. However, he mastered his emotion soon enough to offer an apology of sorts to Boromir. "I beg your pardon," he said. "Those were unnecessary words, and ill-spoken. Come, Boromir; let us get some rest. This tiredness preys on our minds – sleep, my friend, and we will talk further of this soon."

But Boromir shook his head, and ground his teeth in apparent exasperation. 

"Why must you always evade the matter?" he cried. "Are you too much of a coward to even talk of this business?"

Sighing, Aragorn shook his head. "We will wake the others, Boromir. I beg you let the matter rest until the morning; you are tired, now – we both are. The decision does not lie with me; it lies with Frodo. I will support him in whatever he chooses, whether it be to go to Minas Tirith or not."

Frodo watched with mounting alarm as Aragorn suffered himself to be grabbed and wrenched forwards by his cloak once again; thank goodness it wasn't Gimli that Boromir had chosen to pick a fight with, he thought wryly, or the son of the Steward of Gondor would likely have found himself decapitated some while ago. 

"You cannot force Frodo to make that decision," spat Boromir. "He listens to your counsel, and would go wherever you advised him. Why do you insist on this folly? It is madness _not_ to go to Minas Tirith, Aragorn. Why are you blind to this? Why have you made yourself blind?" 

He let go of the other man's cloak abruptly as though it burnt him and accompanied the action with a hard shove backwards; Aragorn stumbled into a tree, and winced as he was nearly impaled on a low branch. Boromir stood in front of him, hands spread, and slowly Frodo realised that he meant to come to blows with the ranger – who in contrast to the other man's aggressive stance merely stepped away from his tree and kept his hands by his side. 

"I will not fight you over this matter, Boromir," he said softly, looking into the other's eyes. "There will be fighting enough when the time comes but not, I hope, among those meant to be friends."

Boromir snorted derisively, and cocked his head to one side. "Friends?" he cried, incredulously. "Friends, you say? What chance of friendship can there be between us – when you will not heed a word I say? You speak of friendship, ranger – but pray what friends have you ever known? What would you know of _friends_?" 

His voice had risen to a muted shout, and as he spoke the last word he drew back a hand and struck Aragorn hard across the face, drawing blood as his mail-covered glove tore his lip. Aragorn said nothing, but slowly raised his head to stare at Boromir; though what he hoped to convey by this gaze Frodo did not know, and never found out as Boromir hit him again, harder, knocking him back into the tree. Still Aragorn said nothing, and made no move to return the blow. 

Frodo thought he understood Aragorn, thought he would perhaps do the same in the same situation; to fight Boromir now over the ring would be to give into its powers, to let it effect and corrupt him. But Boromir was too far gone into a frenzy to realise reason. Frodo saw him bear down upon Aragorn in a flurry of fists and kicks; he lashed out in a blind anger that scared Frodo – and Aragorn, for his part, was doing nothing more than blocking the other man's blows; he made no move to retaliate, and seemed to seek only to protect himself as best he could without harming Boromir. 

But to Frodo's eye this only seemed to enrage the broader man, and he watched in disbelief and horror as his onslaught grew more intense, knocking Aragorn to the ground with a particularly savage punch to his jaw and following it up with a hard kick to the prone man's unprotected side. Frodo winced as he thought he heard ribs snap: Aragorn curled briefly in pain before rising to his knees and getting kicked down again by Boromir, whose hand had now strayed to his long sword. Frodo suddenly realised that something needed to be done; not quite sure what, he gave a loud groan of one who half-wakes from their sleep, and moved restlessly in his bedroll. 

Boromir's head jerked round to stare at him instantly, and Aragorn too looked over to him in quick concern. Frodo lay still again, and he heard a collective sigh of relief from the two men. How odd, he thought, that Boromir could want to beat Aragorn as he had done, and yet does not want to wake me! For when he had seen Boromir's face turn towards him he had read there not only the desire not to be witnessed attacking Aragorn, but also the genuine affectionate and ever so slightly paternal anxiety for the hobbits' wellbeing that the man seemed to have developed on their journey. 

Apparently having assured himself that Frodo was sleeping, Boromir turned back to Aragorn, who was still on the ground, holding his ribs and breathing with some difficulty. A medley of emotions flickered over Boromir's face, visible to Frodo by the light of the small campfire Sam had lit earlier: remorse, anger, disgust, even surprise; but though they chased each other across his face and through his eyes it was anger that won out eventually. He stooped down to the ranger's eye level and caught the dark grey gaze. 

"You are no _king_," he snarled contemptuously. "You pretend to lead us; but where to? You are lost without Gandalf the puppet-master, and turn to sorcerers and witches for help. You are too scared to take what is yours and use it; you are too scared even to let those who would use it take it and mend this world. You are too scared to fight me now. It will not come about if I can help it, Aragorn; but if you ever come to the throne of Gondor I pity this world, and the fate of men." 

He straightened himself, eyes still locked with Aragorn's, then tore his gaze bodily away and disappeared into the woods. 

Frodo watched as Aragorn sat where he was and stared after Boromir for a long, silent time, still as the trees and the sleeping hobbits. There was no anger on his face, only a deep sadness and a certain degree of acceptance. At length he sighed, rose slightly unsteadily to his feet, seated himself next to Frodo by the fire and peeled back his cloak and shirt to examine the extent of the damage done. His right side was marred by a purpling bruise and blood swelling from the broken skin; his face showed the marks of Boromir's fists and his arms were blue where they had taken the brunt of his blows. Frodo gasped. 

"Aragorn!" he exclaimed in dismay, sitting bolt upright and shocked at the man's condition, despite his view of the fight. "You are hurt."

Aragorn looked up at him briefly, slightly startled by the sudden degree of wakefulness Frodo now displayed, and smiled. 

"It is nothing," he said. "An accident whilst hunting. Get back to sleep, Frodo; you will need all the rest you can get before we attempt this next stretch of our journey."

But Frodo paused. "I saw – " he began, not quite sure how to tell Aragorn that he had witnessed the fight. "I saw you, and Boromir," he said finally. Aragorn looked up at him quickly, studied his face for a while, then nodded sadly. 

"The ring works its power already," he said. "You must be careful, Frodo. I had not expected it to reach within the company so soon, though the lady Galadriel had hinted at it: do not go off alone, and stay within shouting distance at all times. I fear that Boromir is in danger from this threat, and so too are we all – would that we had Gandalf still to guide and unite us." Aragorn's voice was distressed, more so than Frodo could really ever remember having heard it before, and he stared at him in worry. 

"What are we to do about Boromir?" he asked. 

Aragorn looked troubled. "I do not see what we can do, without merely making matters worse," he answered. "Boromir is a valiant man, and an honourable; he is suffering from great a inner struggle, Frodo, while the ring fights its way through his own nature. I fear he will succumb – as would all mortals facing the same temptation. A lesser man would have snapped long before now: I may be wrong but I believe he is being targeted by the ring itself, and perhaps has been for some time. It is not his fault. He has done nothing wrong – yet."

"He was hitting you," objected Frodo. 

"I know," admitted Aragorn, laughing suddenly. "But nonetheless, that was probably… understandable. I for my part forgive him the action; I beg you say naught to the others of the incident, but let us keep alert, without letting him know we do so. I can think of no other course of action other than direct confrontation, and I cannot help but think that will not improve things greatly. Now go to sleep, Frodo, and I shall look out for any danger."

And the last thing Frodo saw as he cast himself into a deep and thankfully dreamless sleep was Strider, sat with his arms rested across his knees and drawing deep on his pipe, watching.


End file.
